November 17, 2014
Hello everyone!!
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| Service project...burning the weeds |
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| Sun Valley should be called "Dog Valley" because of all the dogs. (And chickens too! Here's a chicken - just chillin') |
I think that if i could i would rename Sun Valley to Dog Valley.
Every house has like 15,434 dogs…it’s ridiculous. Like the other day we go to
visit an address that was a referral and outside they have 4 dogs chained up
and stuff, and we maneuvered our way around them and then we knocked on the
door and from inside we heard like 3 more dogs come running up to the door...Rivera
and I just shook our heads and laughed cuz of how outrageous it is. And then
there will be dogs just chillin everywhere, like in the streets and everywhere.
And another thing about Sun Valley is that it is DARK at night. There are like
NO street lights and rarely do people have lights on the front of their house,
so it can be scary at times. The other night we pulled up to a house for an
appointment, and Rivera hopped out of the car, and this dog bolted out of
nowhere and started barking and stuff, and so Rivera instinctively jumped on
the hood of our car. I was still in the car so I was just laughing and
laughing. I got a kick out of that, cuz he’s scared of dogs.
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| This is only like a tenth of the police cars and SWAT vans on my street for the crazy shooter... |
One interesting thing that happened this week was we were
studying and our roommates left for the day, but we were still studying and
like 10 minutes after they left they called us and were like "Yo! You guys
gotta come outside!!" and so we darted outside and just like 100 yards
down our street were about 20 cop cars and armored SWAT vans and news crews and
the whole works and they blocked a road off, so we went up to the cop and asked
him if we could go through the road block, or if we needed to go around, and he
was like "well if you go that way, then you will be shot by a mental man
with a deer rifle." so that answered our question. But apparently some
crazy guy was threating to go kill everyone or something, so his neighbor
called 911. But no worries, I wasn’t shot…and neither was my companion.
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| Sal Verduzco (left) is the ward mission leader and Isaac Zurito is his friend and roommate - they are awesome to us |
So a little bit more about Issac Zurito and his roommate, Sal
Verduzco. These two guys are like my favorite people in the world. Verduzco is
the Ward Mission Leader for the Rama Vista, which i served in for one week. But
the thing is he actually lives in the boundaries for my little group, but he
has been going to the Rama Vista (Vista Branch) for like 8 years, so he hasn’t
switched over. But then just last week the stake president issued an announcement
that everyone has to go to their respective wards, so now he is going to come
to our little branch. But this has caused a lot of drama because nobody in the
Rama Vista wants him to leave. He is basically like the branch president,
because overall the leadership in the Rama is not too great, so everyone goes to
him for support and help. We will see what happens. But he is a great example
of consecrating himself to the Lord because he works until 5 everyday, but then
as soon as he gets off he calls us missionaries and asks where he can meet us
to take us to lessons and dinners if we don’t have any and pretty much be our
father. He is so great. He is hilarious too. He reminds me of Grandpa, just his
humor. And he doesn’t speak much English so he always asks me how to say
things in English – which is fun. His roommate, Issac, I don’t know as well,
but he is basically the same thing. He is always taking us out to eat and this
man is all about his style. He refuses to wear a tie more than once so he
always gives us free ties because he just loves shopping and buying ties, so
after he wears them once then he gives them away. His closet is crazy amazing, he
has at least over 500 ties, like every color and shape and design you can think
of. He also gave me a new watch that is way too fancy for me for free. But they
are both awesome. They already invited me to come to their house for Christmas,
so I think that is what we will do.
So we have our feet on the ground here in Sun Valley, and are
finding tons of people to teach. The only problem with the Hispanic people here is
that they are flakier than freakin frosted flakes. I would say that like 95% of
the people we talk to readily agree to have us come back, and we set up an
appointment. But then i would say like 30% of those appointments actually go
through. So that can get frustrating sometimes, but oh well. The people that
have lots of potential and have actually shown some real deep interest include
the Familia Lida, Juan Gonzalez, Hector and Crista and their family, Veronica
and her family, and Mickey Sotelo. If you could keep them in your prayers, that
would be great. Mickey has been an investigator for a few months, and we would
drop him except he came to church yesterday for like the first time in a few
months so we are going to follow up on him and see what the deal is. Also keep
Alma Lopez in your prayers. She is a
recent convert who has gone inactive who we are trying to bring back to church.
Well that about sums up my week so far. I know that this church is true. Don’t be
afraid to share the knowledge we have about it with everyone. I know we will be
blessed if we do.
Love,
Elder Todd
Elder Todd
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| We got the "Greenie" package that my family sent |
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| My comp and I and a younger "mini missionary" that we had with us for the day |
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| All the crap we burned |
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| My goofy roommate...I tried to convince him to go out and do missionary work dressed like that. (He was waiting for his clothes to dry!) |
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